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The Way We Live Now

Paperback Classics Ser.

by Anthony Trollope; David Brooks (Introduction by)

Synopsis

'Trollope did not write for posterity, ' observed Henry James. 'He wrote for the day, the moment; but these are just the writers whom posterity is apt to put into its pocket.' Considered by contemporary critics to be Trollope's greatest novel, "The Way We Live Now" is a satire of the literary world of London in the 1870s and a bold indictment of the new power of speculative finance in English life. 'I was instigated by what I conceived to be the commercial profligacy of the age, ' Trollope said. His story concerns Augustus Melmotte, a French swindler and scoundrel, and his daughter, to whom Felix Carbury, adored son of the authoress Lady Carbury, is induced to propose marriage for the sake of securing a fortune. Trollope knew well the difficulties of dealing with editors, publishers, reviewers, and the public; his portrait of Lady Carbury, impetuous, unprincipled, and unswervingly devoted to her own self-promotion, is one of his finest satirical achievements. His picture of late-nineteenth-century England is a portrait of a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy. In "The Way We Live Now" Trollope combines his talents as a portraitist and his skills as a storyteller to give us life as it was lived more than a hundred years ago.

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Book Information

Copyright year 2001
ISBN-13 9780375757310
ISBN-10 0375757317
Class Copyright
Publisher Random House Publishing Group
Subject FICTION
File Size 0 MB
Number of Pages 896
Length of Recording 39
Shelf No. JH862